A New Sewing Student

I have known Y since before she was born. I met Y’s parents before they had gotten married. Last year I had made a tallit for her.

Y’s mother mentioned to me a few weeks ago that Y wanted to learn how to sew.I asked what her goals were, making clothing? making something else?

Y’s mother didn’t think that her daughter wanted to make clothing but she did want her daughter to learn how to use her new sewing machine.

They came by this afternoon with the Hello Kitty sewing machine. It’s a machine made by Janome and is better than you might think with Hello Kitty on the machine.

We took the machine out of the box. I had Y thread and re thread the machine several times until it was an easy task for her to do.

I got out a scrap of fabric and showed Y how sharp the needle was and asked her to sew a seam. I showed her how to line up the edge of the fabric with the edge of the sewing machine and how you use that alignment to sew a straight seam. Y sewed a beautiful seam.

I asked Y what she wanted to make. She suggested a skirt. We went shopping for fabric in my stash. She selected a great piece of fabric a nice heavy weight stretch with an abstract plaid. I love the fabric. I had made myself two dresses out of it. I know that a stretch fabric is perhaps not what most teachers would start a beginning sewer on, but it is a sturdy fabric.

Y is small for her age and very thin. I know that she is often mistaken for being far younger than her actual age. I like that she chose something that was fairly sophisticated. Because Y is not yet curvy we had the luxury of making a really simple one seamed skirt.

I pulled the length of fabric around her hips and talked about having enough ease to be able to sit down in comfort. I cut the fabric to the correct width.

Y first edged stitched the raw edges so the skirt wouldn’t fray. Then she sewed the back seam.

She selected a wide elastic for the waist. I mentioned that there are dozens of ways to apply an elastic waistband but we would do one that I thought she could manage today. She sewed the elastic into a ring . She then quarter marked the elastic with chalk. we tried to quarter-mark the skirt with chalk as well but the chalk didn’t show up well. Instead we marked the quarter marks with little nips in the fabric.

Y sewed the elastic to the outside of the skirt, matching the quarter marks. She then turned the elastic to the inside and then tacked the elastic to the inside of the skirt, also at the quarter marks.

When I teach sewing I will do some of the potentially tricky bits for my student until they are willing to try the tricky tasks themselves. Y was relatively fearless.

I then had Y topstitch the elastic. The combination of the stretch fabric and the elastic and the zig zag stich we had used ( The machine does not let you adjust stitches for width or length) was too much for the elastic and for Y’s new to sewing hands and it was stretched out of shape and did not recover with steaming. I explained that the top stitching didn’t work because it was tricky to manage all of the layers and the different amounts of stretch in the skirt fabric and the elastic. It was a task completely beyond beginner skills. She has good hands so I felt it was worth the gamble of having her try. The gamble didn’t work.

Unfortunately, we then had to unpick the top stitching. We both worked together on the un picking. I told Y that when she was working at home and had to unpick a mess she should feel free to curse, because that’s what I do when I am alone.Y was a good sport about it though. We chatted comfortably while we unpicked.

We talked about skirt length.Too long and she would look more religious than she is. She didn’t want to look six years old, and she does not want to look trampy.

She decided on an above the knee length.

So after 90 minutes Y ended up with a wearable skirt. There is a funky wobble at the back that Y can choose to fix if she is so inclined. I think she decided that since she didn’t have to look at it, she would ignore the wobble. There is just enough fabric left to make a top for her. Her next skirt will come out better, but this one is awfully good.

Y has learned that being small has some advantages. When Y’s mother came to pick up the two began discussing what Y would be making next.

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

AnonymousJuly 25, 2015 at 4:28 AM
Good job, Y! Don't worry, eventually your physical appearance will catch up to your age. Mine did! (I'm still short, but I haven't looked like a young girl in many years!! LOL) I hope you have many happy hours of sewing ahead of you.

And, Sarah, good for you, teaching her to sew. She did great!! Charlitte

sarah in nyc

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